John Marco Allegro (17 February 1923 – 17 February 1988) was an English archaeologist and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. He was known as a populariser of the Dead Sea Scrolls through his books and radio broadcasts. He was the editor of some of the most famous and controversial scrolls published, the pesharim. A number of Allegro's later books, including The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, brought him both popular fame and notoriety, and also destroyed his career.

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Allegro matriculated from Grammar school in 1939, though did not go on to university, as his father saw little value in higher education, so Allegro joined the British Navy, serving during World War Two and going on to become an officer. After the war he began training for the Methodist ministry, but found that he was more interested in Hebrew and Greek, so he went to study at Manchester University with fees paid by government grant due to his military service.[3] Allegro received his Honours degree in Oriental Studies at the University of Manchester in 1951. This was followed in 1952 by a masters under supervision of H.H. Rowley. While engaged in further research in Hebrew dialects at Oxford under Godfrey Driver in 1953, Allegro was invited by Gerald Lankester Harding to join the team of scholars working on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem, so he spent a year in Jerusalem working on the scrolls. He became a lecturer in Comparative Semitic Philology in Manchester in 1954.[4][5][6]

It was on Allegro's recommendation in 1955 that the Copper Scroll was sent by the Jordanian government to Manchester University in order for it to be cut into sections, allowing the text to be read. He was present during the cutting process in 1956 and later made a preliminary transcription of the text, which he soon translated, sending copies of his work back to Gerald Lankester Harding in Jordan.[7][8] Although Allegro had been first to translate the Copper Scroll, the text was assigned for editing to J.T. Milik by Roland de Vaux, the editor in chief of the scrolls.[9] While he was in England he made a series of radio broadcasts on BBC Radio aimed at popularising the scrolls, in which he announced that the leader discussed in the scrolls may have been crucified.[4] He posited that the Teacher of Righteousness had been martyred and crucified by Alexander Jannaeus, and that his followers believed he would reappear at the End time as Messiah, based on Qumran document Commentary on Nahum 1.4–9[10] (a position that he re-iterated in 1986[11]). His colleagues in Jerusalem immediately responded with a letter to the Times on 16 March 1956 refuting his claim.[4] The letter concluded,

"It is our conviction that either he [Allegro] has misread the texts or he has built up a chain of conjectures which the materials do not support."[12]

One result of this letter seemed to be that his appointment at Manchester was not to be renewed.[13] However, in July after several uneasy months the appointment was renewed.[14]

Allegro was asked a number of times by the Jordanian Director of Antiquities if he would publish the text of the Copper Scroll.[15] After a few years of waiting for Milik's publication of the scroll, Allegro succumbed and set about publishing the text.[16] His book, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll, was released in 1960, while the official publication had to wait another two years. Although Allegro's book was disparaged by his scrolls colleagues, several of his readings in the text are acknowledged in the field today.[8] He believed that the treasure in the scroll was real—a view now held by most scholars[8]—and led an expedition to attempt to find items mentioned in the scroll, though without success.

During this period Allegro also published two popular books on the Dead Sea scrolls, The Dead Sea Scrolls (1956) and The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1958). He was keen to photograph the site of Qumran and various texts, providing an important source of information for posterity.[16]

Allegro was entrusted with the publication of 4Q158–4Q186, a collection of fragments which mainly contained exemplars of a unique kind of commentary on biblical works known as pesharim. He believed that it was necessary to get these works out as quickly as possible[17] and published several preliminary editions in learned journals during the late 1950s. He told de Vaux that he could have his share of the texts ready in 1960, but due to hold ups had to wait until 1968 for his volume, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan V: 4Q158–4Q186, to be published.[18] He reworked his material in 1966 with the assistance of a Manchester colleague, Arnold Anderson, before publication.[16] He stated in the volume that

"it has been my practice to offer no more than the basic essentials of photographs, transliteration, translation of non-biblical passages where this might serve some useful interpretative purpose, and the minimum of textual notes."[19]

John Strugnell published a severe critique of the volume, "Notes en Marge du volume V des 'Discoveries in the Judean Desert of Jordan'" in Revue de Qumran. Allegro's minimalist approach has received widespread scorn in the scholarly world, which nevertheless had the opportunity to analyse the Allegro texts for decades while waiting for other editors to publish their allotments. The first part of Strugnell's allotment was published in 1994.[20]

As early as 1956 Allegro held controversial views regarding the content of the scrolls, stating in a letter to de Vaux, "It's a pity that you and your friends cannot conceive of anything written about Christianity without trying to grind some ecclesiastical or non-ecclesiastical axe." The bulk of his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls was done by 1960 and he was at odds with his scrolls colleagues. When a conflict broke out with H.H. Rowley concerning Allegro's interpretation of the scrolls,[21] Allegro, on the invitation of F.F. Bruce, moved from the Department of Near East Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Manchester to the Faculty of Theology.[17] It was during his stay in Theology that he wrote his controversial book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, whose subtitle was "A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East". Apparently realising the impact this book would have, Allegro resigned his post at Manchester.[17]

Allegro's book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross argued that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity was the product of an ancient "sex-and-mushroom" cult.[22][23] Critical reaction was swift and harsh: fourteen British scholars (including Allegro's mentor at Oxford, Godfrey Driver) denounced it and the publisher even apologised for publishing it.[22] Sidnie White Crawford wrote of the publication of Sacred Mushroom, "Rightly or wrongly, Allegro would never be taken seriously as a scholar again."[24]